Bitspeek not showing up in GarageBand

Fredrik Lidström 2011-05-03T15:52:44Z

UPDATE:With the latest version of Bitspeek (1.0.2) this issue has been resolved. Bitspeek 1.0.2 still runs monaural processing under the hood but it is configured for stereo I/O and will simply mix the two input channels and produce identical output for left and right channels. This change improves host compatibility and will now make it show up and work as intended in Garageband.

Bitspeek is a mono-effect and we have found the support for mono-effects vary a lot between different hosts. In some hosts it works flawlessly even on stereo tracks, some hosts has to have mono only tracks for it to work, while others (like Cubase) only applies the effect on the left channel and passes the right through.

In GarageBand the effect does not show up at all, even on tracks that have recorded mono only, which makes me believe that they ignore mono-effects all together. If there is a way to solve this, I have not manage to find it, if you do, please let us know. To me is looks like GarageBand does not support mono-effects.

We will have to look into how we can improve the compatibility with these hosts in the future.

anonymous 2011-05-22T07:31:34Z

I just bought Bitspeek, and it does not show up in Garageband at all. That's the only AU player I have at this time, so I invested 29 dollars in something I cannot use. Please let potential buyers know that this plug-in does NOT work in Garageband. Please consider making it work on stereo tracks, and possibly an RTAS version.Thank you. Matt

Fredrik Lidström 2011-05-22T10:06:17Z

- Matthew S. Carlton wrote:Please let potential buyers know that this plug-in does NOT work in Garageband.

We have a big red text on the Bitspeek product page:

"Bitspeek is a monophonic effect and in certain hosts it will not work directly on stereo tracks. If you cannot select Bitspeek as an insert effect, or if it only affects the left audio channel, you are probably trying to use it on a stereo track in one of these hosts."

We realize that some of our most eager buyers might still miss this if they just punch the buy button right away on the top of the page. This is of course very unfortunate and that is why we are working on resolving these problems as soon as we can.

- Matthew S. Carlton wrote:That's the only AU player I have at this time, so I invested 29 dollars in something I cannot use....Please consider making it work on stereo tracks, and possibly an RTAS version.

We are working on this already. I will email you more information.

Magnus Lidström 2011-05-22T10:37:52Z

That's the only AU player I have at this time, so I invested 29 dollars in something I cannot use

Ouch, sorry to hear that. If we cannot make it work for you at all there is naturally the choice of refunding your purchase, but to the greatest possible extent we strive to make our plug-ins useful in most environments, so as Fredrik said, we are working to solve this.

- Fredrik Lidström wrote:We have a big red text looking exactly like this on the Bitspeek product page:

Yes, but to be honest Fredrik, the text doesn't really warn you that the product can't be used at all in some hosts. This is admittedly quite extreme, but one has to realize that when it comes to plug-ins, there is always a combination of host, operating system, choice of plug-in format, 32 or 64-bit architecture etc that will present problems. This is why we would never release a plug-in that you cannot try before you purchase.

Please consider making it work on stereo tracks, and possibly an RTAS version.

To clarify, we are going to make Bitspeek stereo compatible (and this will of course be a free update). We are not working on an RTAS version.

Fredrik Lidström 2011-05-22T11:21:07Z

- Magnus Lidström wrote:Yes, but to be honest Fredrik, the text doesn't really warn you that the product can't be used at all in some hosts.

That's true, I'll change the text, so I'm still right... :P

- Magnus Lidström wrote:To clarify, we are going to make Bitspeek stereo compatible (and this will of course be a free update). We are not working on an RTAS version.

As a side-note regarding RTAS (which I put in my email to Matthew), if you are using the FXpansion wrapper you might have noticed that the current version is not working at all with the wrapper. We have a beta on a fix for this, I put this issue in a separate topic.